How Many Seconds In Eternity?
by chemicalflashes
Summary: "How many seconds in eternity?" the emperor asks the shepherd boy. The shepherd boy says, "There is this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years, a little bird comes to sharpen its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: My dear readers, I have been so affected by s09e11 of Doctor Who (Heaven Sent) that I had to write this. No, you don't have to watch Heaven Sent to understand this and no, this isn't a crossover.**

 **The pairing is Draco/Hermione. If you don't like them, then I suggest you get out of here as fast as you can. Also this story contains an insane amount of dialogue/monologue/soliloquy.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER NOR DOCTOR WHO. Anything you recognise, belongs to their respective owners. I am just trying to have a little fun here. *extra long sigh***

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 **How Many Seconds In Eternity?**

 **1**

 _As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower. Always coming. You will run, it will walk. You will rest, it will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long. You will sit too still or sleep too deep. And when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over._

.. ... .

When he was seventeen years, eleven months and twenty-nine days old, he was handed over a strange circular dial made of bronze by his father and mother. In a not-so-subtle way they had explained to him that being a Malfoy was a tough job— not only because of the consequences of the war but also because of the family curse.

"What family curse?" he had asked with raised eyebrows.

"One of our predecessors," his father had begun in a low, serious voice. "Brutus Malfoy the First was cursed by a very powerful time-witch because he had insulted her."

"Time-witch? I thought they were myths."

"Of course not. Very few know this but time-witches exist. No one knows how they got this gift of manipulating spacetime— the fabric of reality you can say. The witch who cursed Brutus was Meridia Moon and when she did so, this dial appeared by his feet and then he disappeared into it. No one except him knows what happened inside, but when he finally got back, he was as pale as alabaster. It is said that inside this dial, a torture chamber exists that makes one confess one's deepest secrets and the way out is very tough—"

"Wait a second. You're saying all this as if _you_ don't know what lies inside," Draco had said incredulously. "If it is a family curse, weren't you affected by it and why, I may ask, am I being told about all this only now?"

"Yes Draco, I don't know what lies inside because I got away, luckily. The curse strikes at alternate generations. Your grandfather got struck and so did his grandfather after they turned eighteen. It is only important to tell you now because the path ahead of you is treacherous and full of wicked dangers. The torture is different for everyone and the ways to get out are only two or so I have heard and what's more, she can strike whenever you least expect it. Either you figure it out and get out of there or the spirit of the time-witch grants you mercy, which I may add, happens after a very long time. Draco, you have to break the curse,"

"I can only try," he had answered back slowly and clearly, shuddering ever so slightly underneath his robes.

.. ... .

Draco went back to Hogwarts for completing his education. He and his friends got sneers in return for nods and hexed at almost every turn and corner. The sides were reversed now; muggle-borns now overpowered the handful of purebloods. Here he was trying to make amends and they just couldn't stop to listen. He had thought that at least Granger would try to understand since she was such a compassionate creature but who was he kidding, little Ms. Perfect Prefect was as bad as the others. A tiny part of him had thought that at least she could have forgiven him but now it seemed impossible.

It was after another such tiring day that he decided to go to his old haunt, the Room of Requirement. He could associate many bad memories of repairing the Vanishing Cabinet with it but right now, he just wanted a big, cushioned bed to rest upon. He entered the Room easily as there was no one about to trouble him. Barely ten minutes had passed when he saw Hermione Granger enter the Room from his position on the bed. She sighed loudly and he noticed her eyes were red.

"What do you want Granger?" he asked, highly irritated at being disturbed.

"Get out, Malfoy," she said without missing a beat.

"Well, I am doing nothing like that Granger."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, as he sat up.

"Well then it looks like I will have—"

She never got to complete that sentence. The dial which he had kept beside his pillow was now glowing with an unearthly golden light. His father had told him to keep it always near him since escaping had proved to be futile for his predecessors.

"Not now!" he shrieked helplessly as Granger watched on curiously. A few moments later a young red haired, brown eyed witch was standing beside his bed and he jumped up from his place to stand hurridely. He eyed her cautiously.

"Oooh I sense something!" the witch or rather, her the voice of her apparition said viciously as she saw the pair of them. "What better revenge than this," she growled at him and Draco gulped in dry air. With a click of her fingers, a raven appeared on her left shoulder. He quickly sensed what was going to happen. He had read in mythology books that time-witches used their magical familiars to murder people. Their familiars were usually ravens— the symbol of death. The raven flew defty towards the surprised Granger and was absorbed by her body.

"No, not her! She is the only one who might—"

Before he could complete his sentence, Granger gave a loud, painful scream which was full of agony. A few seconds later, thick, black smoke escaped from her mouth as she fell down, lifeless. "No..." he moaned as he slumped to the ground. He looked at the ground, where her body was and kept looking at it when he spoke through gritted teeth,"Why did you have to do that?"

The witch did not reply

"Take me, because that's all you can bloody do!" he spat fiercely. A cold, bony hand latched upon his shoulder.

"Drop your wand, Malfoy," the witch ordered him. He was seething with anger but he did as he was told; he had to break the curse. She grabbed his hand roughly and then his world blacked out.

.. ... .

He coughed loudly as he found himself in a cylinder made of glass. There was a door in the cylinder and he came out through it. He wondered if he had apparated or if some other means had been used to send him here. Who had sent him, he couldn't remember. He bent downwards to see what he was standing upon. There was a little of sand present and he grabbed some of it in his fist only to drop it within a few seconds.

He walked out of the room to find himself in a curved, circular corridor lined with narrow windows at regular intervals. Draco walked ahead. He seemed to have forgotten something terrible. What, he couldn't remember. What he could just remember was that he had seen Granger dying before his eyes.

He spoke aloud to the empty air, "If you think because she's dead I'm weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So for your own sake, understand this: I am Draco Malfoy, the heir of the Malfoy family as well as the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop."

On the wall there was one of those muggle things he had seen in the Muggle Studies class. What did one call them— ah, yes, television. A grey static was present on its screen. Suddenly the static gave way to a very slow moving, black and white picture of a corridor, similar to one he was in. A few flies were flying here and there and he tried to swat them but his attempts were futile. He walked ahead and found a muddied spade, picked it up and studied the thick layer of dust on it.

"What, are you gardeners? I hate gardening! What sort of a person has a power complex about flowers? It's dictatorship for inadequates. Or to put it another way, it's dictatorship." he yelled as he walked forward. His footsteps did not show him anyone. Was it possible that they were all hiding?

"Come on! Chop chop! Draco Malfoy will see you now. Show me what you've got! I just watched the only person who might have forgiven me die in agony. My day can't get any worse. Let's see what we can do about yours! When the sun sets I'll be able to establish an exact position by the stars. Then you'll have a choice: to come out, show yourself, or keep on hiding. Granger preached her Gryffindors during her awful sermons to them that one shouldn't believe in revenge. You should know, I never listened to her."

The next window showed him an eery sight; there was a hunchbacked figure in dirty white clothes and inexplicably, he knew— he knew that it was coming for him.

"I know you. I've seen you before." he whispered.

He retraced his steps and came in front of the room he had begun his journey from and there it was, that strange creature and it was heading straight for him with its beastly black claws of death. He ran forward, away from it. Wait a second, he thought. Why am I not using my wand? But a quick search of his trouser pockets revealed nothing. "Oh, to hell with you!" he shouted. He ran and ran and ran and ran and found himself in front of a wooden door. He pushed hard and heaved and sighed but the door wouldn't budge even an inch.

'Be nice,' his inner voice commanded.

"Be nice? To whom? _To a door_?" he yelled, befuddled. The creature/thing/whatever was very near now and who was he to question his own inner thoughts. Oh, this is asinine, he thought and said, "Oh, you poor tormented door, please open up, I understand why you're so cross— all your life, you've just been knocked upon and pushed. I understand your plight. Please open now."

There was a slight click. Surprisingly, the door had opened.

"See Granger..." he said with a smirk and then stopped short. She was dead; he seemed to have forgotten that vital piece of information in that minute moment of joy. Draco quickly opened the door only to find no route of escape from the creature because the door did not open into another corridor, no, it opened into a small room, if one could call it a room. The space was barely one metre wide and one one metre broad and the walls were all solid stones like the rest of the castle. Where was he to escape?

The creature was now looming upon him. It was so dark beneath its hood that he could not see its face, not that he wanted to.

"I can't actually see a way out of this." he babbled desperately. "I've finally run out of corridors. There's a life summed up. Now this is new. I'm scared. I just realised that. I'm actually scared of dying, I always have been and I actually said that aloud."

Suddenly the creature stopped. Just like that. Even the flies stopped flying and buzzing. Draco looked at the creature with wide eyes full of surprise. He even flicked a still fly just to be sure. Nothing happened.

"Something I said? What did I say? Why did you stop?" he muttered but he could not continue whatever he had planned on saying because the whole floor started to move like some clockwork device. He was displaced and so was the creature. A new corridor opened up in front of him; it was another mystery to fall into. This one lead to a proper room. Their was a fireplace but no fire was roaring in it and foggy sunlight was streaming in from the window in front of him. The window had a little, wooden stool in front of it. In front of the fireplace, there was a comfortable looking bed, almost similar to the one the Room of Requirement had given to him. Above the fireplace, on the mantel place there was a pot full of fresh lilies. And just above that, there was a very old, muggle style portrait of Granger, meaning it did not move. The picture was faded but her bright eyes, brown hair and warm smile were still present for him to see.

On the opposite wall, there was another one of those muggle television screens. The image was moving slowly. He did not try to pay attention to that, instead he closely looked at Granger's portrait. She was beautiful, he remarked, in her own bookish way and he grew sad, remembering that he would never get to apologise to her. He plucked the petals from the lillies and watched them fall down on the ground. He looked out of the window and then he saw a fly buzzing in front of him. Time for doom had stuck again. Without turning back, he knew that the creature was standing mere metres behind him.

"When I was a very little boy," he began. "My grandfather had died from Dragonpox. They covered him in veils, but it was a hot, sunny day, and the flies came. It gave me nightmares for years. So who's been stealing my nightmares? What am I here for? And you've known about me for a very long time, right? So, what is it? Is it a trap? Is it a prison? No! Is it a torture chamber? Am I right? Somebody really should know better because I seem to have forgotten. Anyone who can put all of this together, and steal my bad dreams, they should know better. The secrets I have… No. No chance. Not telling. Not me! I told I was scared of dying, and I wasn't lying either." he said as he flung the little, stool right out of the window. The glass broke with a deafening shatter.

"Advantage me! Because I bet you won't see this coming!" he finished with a wicked grin and then he did a very un-Slytherin thing. He jumped right out of the window.

.. ... .

 _He was back in the Potions Classroom. It was his favourite classroom because it just had that look of hardwork and determination about it. The benches were empty and Granger was standing in front of the blackboard, facing away from him. Her thick hair was covering her shoulders and she had a piece of chalk in her hand._

 _"Sorry, I'm late! Jumped out of a window. Certain death. Don't you want to know how I survived? Go on. Ask me. No! Of course I had to jump. The first rule of being interrogated is that you are the only irreplaceable person in the torture chamber. The room is yours, so work it. Isn't it funny that mad Aunt Bella told me that? If they're going to threaten you with death, show them who's boss. Die faster! And you've seen me do that more often than most when your gang of Gryffindors cornered us Slytherins in the corner. Isn't that right, Granger?_ "

The wind was whipping furiously on his face but in his mind, he continued speaking and he kept his eyes shut up tight.

 _"Rule one of dying: don't. Rule two: slow down. You've got the rest of your life. The faster you think, the slower it will pass. Concentrate. Assume you're going to survive. Always assume that. I did that during the War. Imagine you've already survived. There's a storeroom in your mind. Lock the door and think. This is my storeroom. I always imagine that I'm back in this classroom, showing off. Telling you— well I don't know why it is always you in her. Well I tell you how I escaped— making you laugh or making you cry, depending on the circumstances. That's what I'm doing right now. I am falling, Granger. I'm dying. And I'm going to explain to you how I survived. Can't wait to hear what I say. I'm nothing without an audience. One hope: salt. I thought I smelled it earlier when I broke the window, I'm sure. Salty air. The castle is standing in the sea! Diving into water from a great height is no guarantee of survival. I need to know exactly how far I'm going to fall and how fast. Why do you think I threw the stool? Fall time to impact: seven seconds. The wind resistance of the stool and the atmospheric density, I checked that out when I plucked the petals. Am I spoiling the magic? I work at this stuff you know. Should hit the water in about… .02 seconds. The chances of remaining conscious are—"_

He hit the surface of the calm water with a great splash but did not open his eyes. Not yet, it was too soon.

 _Granger was writing something on the board._

 _Question 1: What is this place?_

 _"Can't I just sleep?" he muttered._

 _Question 2: What did you say that made the creature stop?_

 _"Do I have to know everything? Isn't it_ you _who knows every damn thing."_

 _Then she wrote something again._

 _How are you going to **WIN**?_

 _"Granger...can't I just lose?"_

.. ... .

.. ... .

 **So folks, how was the first chapter? Tell me! That is, review. Please. And by the way, flames will be doused by an enormous flood. Friendly criticism and pointing of mistakes is okay, though.**


	2. Chapter 2

**To the guest who reviewed the last chapter: Yes, I know some of the things might not make sense in the last chapter but they are going to make sense here. And, there are going to major changes in the dialogues as well as the story pattern. I know I cannot put up everything that the Doctor said. By the way, there are reasons why Draco Malfoy doesn't remember who put him in the dial and I know that I clearly mentioned in the text that he does not remember who put him in there.**

 **Thanks to spamella for reviewing!**

 **DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER NOR DOCTOR WHO. Anything you recognise, belongs to their respective owners. I am just trying to have a little fun here. *extra long sigh***

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 **How Many Seconds In Eternity?**

 **2**

 _The woods were dark and noisy. There were a lot of people running about and he was lost. Death Eaters were coming. Suddenly he saw a little clearing and rushed towards it. On the edge of the clearing he saw a sight which surprised him; the Weasel had stumbled down due to a thick root of a tree, Potter was helping him get up and Granger was looking around frantically. What am I going to do?, he thought and walked forward. 'She should not be here,' was his second thought and his final thought was, 'I am getting her out of here. I don't know why am I caring, but I will.'_

.. ... .

Draco jerked open his eyes. It was dark and he was cold and wet and alone. Then he saw something that chilled his spine; on the seabed, a few metres below him, there were thousands of skulls glaring at him with their empty, hollow eyes. He frantically swam back to the surface and then reached the shore. The air was thick with fog as he heaved himself onto the land. Sand stuck on his wet clothes and all of his attempts to remove it were futile. His hair was dropping water into his eyes and he quickly set it right with a deft movement of his hand. He looked upwards to see that the walls of the whole castle were moving in a circular fashion.

There was a grey staircase made up of stone leading to somewhere. It reminded him of the long staircase he had in his home. Thankfully, there was no television near him to show where the vicious creature was moving. He climbed the steps slowly, lost in deep thought. Why couldn't he remember who had murdered Granger? Why couldn't he remember who had put him here? What was his purpose in here? In his mind's eye, he saw his parents, back at the Manor. His father was speaking something but no sound was leaving his lips. Was it possible that someone had cast a memory charm on him? Could be.

The staircase ended in a large room which also, thankfully, had no televisions in it. There was a hot, scorching fire present in the fireplace and someone had put clothes on stands in front of it to dry. These clothes, he noted with great interest, were exactly the same as the ones he was wearing. With great deliberation, he picked up the shirt and after a short inspection, found it to be okay. Draco quickly changed his clothes and put his own on the stands to dry in exactly the same manner as the previous ones had been put up. He did not know why he did that...somehow, it just felt... right?

His walk led him to another corridor. It was same, like the rest of them: all monotonous grey stone. There was a small clearing at the end of the corridor and this time, a television was present on the wall. The image was moving, slowly and steadily and that was enough to tell him that the creature was coming for him again. He was tempted to speak; somehow, speaking aloud had always made him feel less lonely.

"It keeps coming, Granger. Wherever I go, it follows. Why? What have I done? Why does it do that?"

 _Writing appeared on the board:_

 _Wrong question!_

"Always the know-it-all. What's the right question then?"

 _Not why. What?_

"It's following me. Wherever I go it's tracking me. Very slowly though. Scary lurching. Scary. These televisions everywhere. It's showing me exactly where it is all the time— how far it's got, how near. Because it's trying to scare me. Putting its breath on my neck. That's the point, that's what it's doing. This is theater! It's all about fear and this is much worse than when Voldemort had taken over my house!"

He stopped for breath when he noticed something peculiar on the floor. A hexagonal stone was missing from the centre and someone had drawn arrows with chalk pointing towards the gap. Hmmm...strange, he thought and went out.

"My working hypotheses is that we're in a fully automated haunted house, a mechanical maze. It's a killer puzzle box designed to scare me to death and I'm trapped inside it. Must be my birthday. Fifth year, it was Umbridge, sixth year, it was Scarhead who cursed me, last year, it was Voldemort and now this...whatever this creature is,"

Flashes of unclear memories flitted through his mind. 'Family curse' and 'predecessors' was all he could remember. So somebody had trapped him here due to some very old grudge. But what did they want? And why had they killed Granger? What had she done? He could not even remember how she had died. He was walking faster now and from somewhere he could feel a cold drought coming. He saw a big wooden door on his left side. A window was beside it and in front of the window, there was one of those terrible televisions.

He quickly entered the room beyond through the door. It wasn't actually a room but a big, circular space without any roof. There was a thick layer of grass growing on the floor. There was another spade there, similar to the one he had seen earlier, at the beginning. But this one was much cleaner. He picked it up. There were wild bushes growing on the edges and in the middle, there was one fresh grave. It looked like a grave but it could really have been anything.

"A grave and another spade. Someone wants me to dig. What do you think, Granger? Is someone trying to give me a hint? What would you do?"

 _"Opposite to whatever you do,"_

"Yes, yes of course you would, which, let's be honest, is what killed you. You just stood there instead of springing into action. So, someone is trying to tell me that there's something important buried in this garden. That's almost the first thing they tried to tell me. It could be a trick. Could be one of my predecessors," he said and paused before continuing again. "Because I'm not the first prisoner here, am I?" he shouted. "All those skulls on the seabed! Wonder where they all went wrong! Was it here? When they took your little 'hint' and started digging?"

After his little speech, Draco sat down on the ground, with the spade still in his hand and observed the television in the corridor from the window. The image was moving slowly, just like before. The same thing played on for approximately the next one hour and then, it stopped. All he could see was a few flies buzzing on a wooden surface. Where was the creature? He grew curious and opened the door to have the greatest shock of his life; the creature was standing in front of him with its claws raised. He could still see nothing below its hood.

Draco frantically tried to close the door but the creature resisted. Finally after a long and hard struggle, he was able to close it. Quickly, he put the spade's handle below the door's handle such that the combination together with the ground formed a right-angled triangle. Of course, the door wouldn't budge even and inch now, however hard the creature tried. "Physics of a triangle. I win!" he yelled.

He slumped against the door and sighed. "So, it can set traps. That's okay. I've grown good at traps in the last two years." he murmured, remembering the time Greyback had 'accidently' thrown him into a pit full of snakes. He shuddered a little and got up to see through the window that the creature was going away. It stopped for a while, pointed its claws towards him and went away.

"So where are you off to?" he asked and glanced around. "Only one way in, one way out. Well seeing as you're going, I myself will be going."

Draco removed the spade from its arrangement and rushed out. He looked behind to see that the creature had turned around rather quickly given its slow plod and was now heading for him. "So you have much more brains than I thought," he muttered and jumped back into the garden room. He put the spade back on the door's handle and waited for the creature to bang on the door like before. But it did not do any such thing, instead it quietly turned back and went wherever it was going.

He huffed in relief and picked up the spade and as he did so he looked at his right hand's wrist; there was a broad, purplish, circular mark going round it as if someone had tied a particularly tight rope on it. He hadn't noticed it until then due to all the agonising excitement. He ran a finger on it and found that it hurt very badly. The pain was almost excruciating. _What_ had been exactly done to him before he came here?, he wondered as he circled the grave. His mind was whirring with questions— it had been ever since he had landed there. What if this was all some very nasty prank? What if Granger was a part of it? And what if it was not? What if he was in a very real, very terrible disaster?

It is no use, he thought, thinking these questions if he wasn't able to get out of here and find Granger's murderer that is, if she really had been murdered. He did not know why, but he really hoped she had not been. He did not know why, but he had really wanted to apologise to her and now he did not know if he ever would be able to. Draco sighed slowly as he approached the grave. There wasn't much to do, was there? If he went outside, the creature would return and he did not want that. The grave was luring him; it was calling out to him to dig. There wasn't anything else to do anyway and moreover he was safe in here— there was only one way in and one way out. He should have known better. In fact, he would have known better if he had been looking at the television screen outside the window.

Draco started to dig away.

.. ... .

Hermione woke up with a start. And a massive headache.

"Hello, sweetheart," a saccharine young, feminine voice said. It startled her and she got up frantically, terror showing clearly in her eyes. Hermione discovered she had been lying on the cold floor all this while. When had she fallen asleep? And surely she must have dreamt the voice that had startled her just now. Wait, hadn't she been going to the Room of Requirement after seeing— well, breaking up with Ron (it would be useless to forget the instance) and then encountered Malfoy in there? And hadn't there been a raven flying about? The red-haired woman standing before her stopped her train of thoughts. She hadn't been standing there before and she had literally appeared out of thin air.

Hermione was shocked. "Who are you?" she asked warily. She knew the woman hadn't apparated as she had not heard the distinct pop of apparition after her arrival and anyway, apparition was not possible in Hogwarts.

"I am a time-witch and that's all you need to know," she replied, regarding her nails, as if they were far more interesting than the girl before her. Hermione was just opening her mouth to say something, perhaps to give a quick retort or something along those lines when the woman lifted her finger to her lips, indicating her to be silent with a vicious look in her eyes. "Now look, girly," she said. "I mean you no harm but if you keep me asking stupid questions, then I might do something about it. Yes, I know you're wondering where that stupid boyfriend of yours is. Were you supposed to meet her for a quick, little rendezvous? It's a long story, but I might tell you all about it if you stay quiet,"

Hermione raised her eyebrows, confused. What boyfriend was this woman talking about? Had she done something to Ron? And where was Malfoy by the way? _Merlin—_ was she talking about Malfoy? After approximately five minutes, she spoke, choosing her words carefully.

"By boyfriend, did you mean the boy who was lying on the bed?"

"Well, yes."

"He's not my boyfriend,"

"Oh now, really? I wonder why he is thinking so much about you, right now,"

I would not let her, whoever the hell she is, get the best of me, thought Hermione as she stared the woman in front of her right in the eyes. "What do you know about Malfoy, anyway? Eh?" she shot back.

"Oh look at you, such a feisty one! As for the answer to your question: a lot more than you think,"

Hermione chose to stay quiet. Let the madwoman tell it all herself, she thought. As soon as she had thought that, she felt a cold, bony hand clutch her shoulder and she shuddered. When had the woman moved behind?

"I heard that, girly," she whispered and it sounded cold and deadly and frigid. "You might want to keep your thoughts to yourself. I am a very good mind reader and I don't hesitate in punishing those who insult me. Oh, that reminds me of a story. Shall I tell you? Something to cut the time?"

Suddenly Hermione felt as if a cloth had been tied tightly around her mouth to prevent her from speaking. She opened her to mouth to yell, 'Who the hell are you?' but not a single sound ever came out.

"Now that's better, isn't it. Believe me, that's a very light punishment, considering my history. Ah, now where, where, where... was I? Oh yes, the story!" she exclaimed with fake gleefulness. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful pureblood witch aka me."

Hermione rolled her eyes. Coincidentally, the invisible cloth around her tightened even more, making it harder for her breathe properly. The witch began telling her the story again.

"She had a very unique gift; she was a time-witch which meant she could travel in time without using a time turner. She was brilliant and was known for her innovations, including the invention of the modern Floo Powder which did not require the user to burn anything. She was also known for thinking about a machine called, 'teleporter'. Actually, she had stolen the idea from future muggles, realising it could help wizard kind a lot. It could help those people who couldn't afford to build a fireplace in their homes or those who didn't know how to apparate. She even built one. But then, tragedy stuck. Since she was a time-traveller, she had much different notions regarding muggles and muggle-borns than the purebloods surrounding her. Due to her beliefs, she found her love with a muggle-born from her times and married him after just about a month of courtship because she was deeply in love with him,"

Here she paused and took a long breath. By now Hermione was positively intrigued.

"In doing so, she rejected the advances of Brutus Malfoy, who was one of the most powerful wizards of those times. And who wouldn't have rejected him— he was excessively obnoxious and incredibly cocky but Brutus Malfoy wasn't one of those people who forgot things easily. More so ever, he was surprised that he, a pureblood from a family which was a part of The Sacred Twenty-Eight, had been rejected in favour of a muggle-born. So one night, when she was out on business, he came and burnt down her house. Her husband perished in the fire,"

She paused again. Hermione tried to take a long breath for what was coming next. What she heard, made her eyes widen with shock.

"You might ask, how did the witch know that it was Malfoy who burnt her house. The answer of course is that she time-travelled to see it for herself. You might then ask, why didn't she save her husband. Well she couldn't, because his death— or for that matter, anyone's death is a fixed point in time. And no matter how much she wanted him back, he still wouldn't be there. Draco Malfoy's father told him that Brutus Malfoy had insulted the witch. He couldn't have been more wrong. Anyway, the witch was furious and very, very angry. So she tracked Malfoy and one day, attacked him, not using her wand but her mind and made him forget that she had ever attacked him. She trapped him in a confession dial which she herself had made. The realms of the dial were set to mimic the seasons and sky of Earth. She sent him inside the confession dial using the teleporter she had made. He was trapped inside for a long time and he couldn't come out by himself, so the witch granted him mercy after he confessed that he was sorry for what he did to her but she was still very angry; a single apology couldn't bring back her husband, could it? So after he came out, she cursed his entire lineage for taking away her love from her. He trembled with fear as she told him how the castle within the dial would change according to each Malfoy's worst nightmares."

Here she stopped and released Hermione from the invisible spell, thus allowing her to speak once more.

"So that's where you sent him!" she spoke, the compassion within her rising. "I realise what Brutus Malfoy did to you was unjust and evil but why punish his descendants? Why torture them for something that one deranged ancestor of theirs did?" Hermione did not know why she speaking in favour of her suppressor of six years but one thing that she did know was that nobody (except perhaps Voldemort) deserved to encounter their worst nightmares while being trapped and besides, she had been noticing that Draco Malfoy had been trying very hard to be polite to everyone regardless of their blood status.

"I knew," the woman said. "That making you speak would unleash a torrent of questions upon me." She smirked. "That's how me rolled in the 1500s, girly. Anyway, about two years the after the incident, Brutus Malfoy visited me with his son and begged me to release his family from the curse and save his son from the agony he had undergone. It felt good to see him beg— to see him parting with a part of his prestige to bend down before me. Believe me, I even wanted to release them from the curse but as you must be knowing, a curse can't be undone. I am not a cruel person, Hermione Granger, I am just very, very vindictive. So, I changed the conditions of the curse; instead of his son, his grandson had to live through the curse and so on and so forth. Now I am dead and long gone, and I still haven't seen a Malfoy who got out on his own without confessing or without taking my mercy and in turn broke the curse. Do you think this one will?"

Hermione did not reply to the question. Instead she asked two questions of her own.

"How long has he been in there? How long have _I_ been here?"

The woman sighed. "You have been here for approximately thirty minutes. I do not know about him— I didn't keep a count and even if I did, why will I tell you?"

"Can I go?" she asked, knowing that the answer would most probably be a solid 'no'.

"Of course not! You're the cheese in the trap," came back the crisp reply.

It was going to be a long wait.

.. ... .

Draco was tired but he did not dare to cease his work. If someone was giving him a hint, he might as well as make the best of it. It had grown dark when he stopped to notice that he had dug well under the surface. For a moment, he looked upwards and saw the stars twinkling up above in the night sky. "No, no... that's not right..." he murmured.

The hole he had dug was now much taller than him and approximately three metres in depth. He swung the spade again and this time it hit something solid. In excitement, he bent down to sit on his knees to examine further whatever had been buried. He scraped the soil with his hands in a rush and finally uncovered a stone. It was the same hexagonal stone he had seen missing earlier. Some words had been etched on it.

 **I AM IN 12**

His brow furrowed in thought. Was it possible that someone else was also present in the castle along with him? Could be, since this place seemed to be huge. He was just removing the dust from the stone when something rumbled below the ground underneath him. A fly, from seemingly nowhere had come to sit on the stone before him. Suddenly the ground lurched with force as the creature broke through it to hover in front of him with its long, black claws. Draco stood up, very frightened.

He closed his eyes and he was back in the classroom.

 _"Well that was another close one. Or it will have been, once I've been and got myself out of it. So how am I going to do that? Come on, Granger. Ask me questions."_

 _She wrote something._

 _Tell no lies_

 _Then she pointed to Question 2._

 _What did you say that made the creature stop?_

 _"The truth, yes. But not any old truth, Granger. This whole place is designed to terrify me to make me confess. I'm being interrogated. It's not just truth it wants, that's not enough. It's a confession. I have to tell truths I've never told before. That's the only thing that stops it." He paused for a short while before continuing. "You see the problem is… Granger… there are truths that I can never bring myself to tell. Not for anything. But I'm scared and I'm alone. Alone. And very, very scared."_

Draco opened his eyes and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"I confess! I didn't tell the Death Eaters that it was Potter, Weasley and Granger because I wanted the other side to win the War! That was a lie, it's always been a lie! Not enough? You want more? I was scared for her! I lied because I was scared for Granger! Is that what you want me to say? Is that true enough for you?"

The creature stopped and Draco led out a long breath that he did not know that he had been holding as he hurriedly scrambled out of the pit. He rushed out into the corridor as the rooms started rearranging themselves once again. He wandered about a little this time, keeping a lookout on the televisions around him and this time, he kept a count of the minutes as they passed by. He never kept still and was always on the move as he explored the castle until he stumbled across an enormous library. It was even larger than the Hogwarts library. Granger would have liked spending her time here, he thought.

"It's funny," he murmured half-heartedly as he roamed through the bookshelves. "The day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead." Suddenly his eyes fell on a brown coloured book. On its spine it was written, 'Teleportation by M. Moon'. He picked it up out of sheer interest and took it with himself as he wandered the castle. Draco was familiar with the strange word. Long ago, when he had been a child of eleven, he had picked up a book in the library to read and had been enamoured by it. Later when Parkinson had told him that he had been reading up a muggle author, he had put the book back in its place, faking disgust. But he never ever forgot it.

As he walked through the castle, taking care to maintain a large distance between himself and the creature, he read through the book and suddenly it all clicked like the last piece of a perplexing puzzle. Finally, he had realised it— the glass cylinder he had stepped out from at the beginning, the purplish mark on his hand.

Someone had teleported him in here.

Who, he did not know.

Draco was not at all content with how little he knew of the predicament he was in. So now, he concentrated on finding room 12. If someone was really in there, then they might be of some help. As he walked around he stumbled across the room which had Granger's portrait in it. The window he had broken didn't even have a single crack and the lilies whose petals he had picked were just as fresh as before. He saw the room with the grave and the grave looked as if he had never dug it.

"This is how my world works, Granger," he spoke as he made notes in his mind. "I tick off the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown. If I draw the creature to one extreme of the castle and I run to the other extreme, I can earn myself a maximum of 82 minutes. Eighty-two minutes to eat, sleep and work. My work is finding room 12. The castle wants me to. It's luring me. The numbering is a bit confused— as if the rooms are all jumbled up. Maybe they all move around. I saw the whole castle move, when I made the creature stop. Every room, if I leave it long enough, reverts to its condition at the moment I arrive. It tidies up after itself. Automated room service. I think this whole place is inside a closed energy loop. Constantly recycling. Or maybe I'm in hell. That's okay. I'm not scared of hell. It's just heaven for bad people and you of all people know how bad I can be. But how long will I have to be here? Forever?" He paused as he looked at a television and saw the image moving as usual. "It's always coming. Always closer. The countdown never stops. But the countdown to what?" he muttered and turned around the corner.

Wait, he had seen this corridor before. He rushed into it. This path led to the teleporter room, where it had all begun. This time he took notice of the smallest things. Behind the glass cylinder, where all the machinery was, there was a skull. There were two wires attached on either side of its head, just above where the ears would have been.

"There are two events in everybody's life that nobody remembers, Granger." he said to the skull, as looked down at it. "Two moments experienced by every living thing. Yet no one remembers anything about them. Nobody remembers being born and nobody remembers dying." He picked up the skull, daintily, unattached the wires and looked into its dark, hollow eyes. "Is that why we always stare into the eye sockets of a skull?" he asked the thin air. "Because we're asking, 'What was it like?' 'Does it hurt?', 'Are you still scared?'"

Suddenly, he noticed something hastily scribbled in the sand, just above from where he had picked the skull from. He kept the skull back on the ground. The word was, 'BIRD'.

His brow furrowed more that it possibly could have. The mystery seemed to get more deeper and sinister by the minute.

"Bird? What's bird got to do with it? Are there birds here?" He craned his neck to get a better view of the ceiling above him. There were no birds whatsoever. "There's something I am missing, Granger. And I am afraid it's something terrible," he said. Suddenly a cold, salty drought flew in which erased the word in the sand; a stone wall had slid to open up a staircase. Draco picked up the skull again and went up the staircase. The staircase ended on a small terrace which looked and felt a lot like the top of the Astronomy Tower back at Hogwarts. He stared at the sky.

"I'm following bread crumbs laid out for me, Granger. This is somebody's game and I can't stop playing it. A game everybody else has lost." he murmured as he put the skull on one of the parapets. "I know how to move that wall, Granger, so long as I don't run out of confessions." He paused before speaking again because he had seen a fly. "What I really want to know is, who's been playing about with the stars? They're all in the wrong places! For England anyway. And no, I didn't time travel to get here. I can feel time travel. I know how it works and I've had first hand experience with time-turners— I don't know about anyone else but Granger certainly didn't fool me with her antics in third year. If I didn't know better, I'd say I've travelled 7,000 years into the future. But I do know better. So who moved the stars?"

He could feel the silent, slow plod behind him. That slow lurch, just behind him and then he saw those vicious claws, curling just above his cheek.

"Hermione Granger," he spoke peacefully; the claws stopped where they had been. He turned around to face it. "I confess that I never really hated her, except perhaps in the first and second years. I confess that I think that no one should ever be able to hate her. I confess, I am very repentant for all the bad things that I ever said or did to her."

He ran out of its reach just before the castle started to move again. A few minutes later, he stopped right in front of room 12. Finally, he thought as he opened up the door. It was the same room he had got trapped in when he had first encountered the creature. "Hello?" he called out desperately as he felt the cold, grey walls. "Is anyone in here?" Of course, no reply came back. Draco stepped outside, very much disheartened. "It's a trap, Granger," he said. "It's a lure and a trap." he added as he heard the shuffle of the creature coming behind him.

.. ... .

.. ... .

 **Okay fellas, so surprisingly it has turned into a three-parter. Whoops. Review please**!


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: As usual, thanks to spamella for reviewing!**

 **This chapter sums up, 'How Many Seconds In Eternity?' I am sorry for the lateness in getting this up here. Sorry if any errors are present (using this site from a mobile isn't easy)**

 **DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER NOR DOCTOR WHO. Anything you recognise, does not belong to belong to their respective owners. I am just trying to have a little fun here. *extra long sigh***

 **•**

 **•**

 **How Many Seconds In Eternity?**

 **3**

"He has reached the seventh mark. I think it's time we made an appearance,"

Hermione glanced up from her skirt to the witch. Whatever, she thought and looked at the clock the Room had provided. It was no use, because the clock had ceased ticking. Perhaps no one had wound it? Her mind calculated that Malfoy had at at least been gone for four hours now. How long will she have to wait? How long will he be trapped in there? She belatedly realised that she was getting very concerned about Malfoy's fate.

"I know, you're thinking when that stupid boy will be back so that you can get away,"

"You don't know me!" she spat. "And you don't know about my powers of patience." Hermione took in a deep breath. "When I get out of here, and you know I would because I believe he would escape eventually, I would tell Draco Malfoy that he was effing brave and even if he doesn't succeed, I will try everything to get him help!"

"Getting protective, are we? Well, let me reassure you Ms. Granger that no Malfoy has ever got out of there without my help or confessing. And besides, let me also tell you that we are in time lock right now. I was lying earlier when I said you had been here for half an hour. I always lie. The truth is girly, that you are trapped along with him. Step outside this room and you will find no one to help you or him."

She felt the invisible binds melting away.

"You're lying," Hermione said as she got up on her feet and began walking towards the door.

"I am not stopping you," the witch replied languidly, faking a yawn.

Hermione pushed open the doors roughly to be greeted by the dull, semi-dark corridors of her school. It was supposed to be around 9 'o' clock right now and she realised that she had to be doing her prefectorial patrol right then. She hurriedly ran around to find the other prefect who was supposed to be some fifth year, oh yeah, Dennis Creevey. Who was this woman fooling with her stupid 'Time Lock' theory, Hermione thought with reassurance. She would just turn the corner round the Library and meet the young, demure boy as she had promised yesterday.

But as she turned around the corner, there was no one waiting for her. There was no one who said, 'Hello, Hermione,". There was no one who silently trudged behind her as she told him to go this way and that.

There was only the overpowering darkness.

"Lumos," she whispered.

The sudden spring of light from her wand didn't reveal anyone either but Hermione had not lost all her hope till now. Perhaps Dennis had gone already, seeing that she had been late. "Dennis," she called out, "are you there?"

No answer came back. 'Try more names' her trembling inner voice commanded.

"Harry?"

"Ron?"

"Ginny?"

"Luna?"

"Parvati?"

"Neville?"

"Seamus?"

"Dean?"

In desperation she even screamed for Filch but no grumpy, old man came to reprimand her and certainly, no suspicious cat of his did so either. She ran and ran and ran and did not stop until she found the stone gargoyle to McGonagall's office.

"Mocking hats," she muttered to it.

Hermione hurriedly stepped on the staircase and went up. When it stopped moving, she stepped inside, frustated. She knew that the Headmistress was there. She had to be.

McGonagall wasn't there and she gasped when she saw who was sitting on the table.

"See?" the woman said, "Told yah. There's nobody out here to help you little girl,"

Hermione could just glare at her, utterly gobsmacked like someone who had just been punched in the face for no apparent reason whatsoever.

"But this— this is...impossible!" she finally spoke, choking on her words.

The woman smirked and said, "I would have explained if I had a board and some chalk but seeing that they are not available, I think you will just have to take my word for it,"

"Now," she said after a short pause, "if you would just care to come with me,"

Suddenly the woman was beside her in a rapid flash. She grabbed her arm and whispered something that caused Hermione to become invisible. The binds were put back in place and a Muffliato charm was cast upon her for good measure. The woman then proceeded to tie something very tightly on her wrist. It seemed to be some kind of a metallic wrist band. The woman hurriedly punched some code into it and quickly removed it.

"Here we go!"

Hermione could just sigh silently.

.. ... .

He did not know it, but the skull that he had placed earlier on the parapet, had now dropped into the water below due to the shaking of the castle.

Draco ran his fingers around the edges of the stone wall in a desperate attempt to find some way to escape that blasted corner like he had done earlier. The corridor he had come from was narrow and he could not possibly run away without hurtling headlong into the creature and that was something that he did not want. He stepped backwards and turned around to face his death. As he did so in a haste, he stepped on a slightly raised stone which caused it to be pressed down. He stumbled onto the ground— the sound of his fall overidden by the harsh grinding of stone over stone as the wall before him slid left to reveal a path hidden behind it.

The corridor behind it was dark and there seemed to be a luminous, white, glimmering light coming from the end. He got back on his feet as fast as he could. If there was a way to escape the creature through the path in front of him then he had to find it pretty quickly. Taking one cautious look behind he moved forward. His heart was telling him to run but the shine of the floor had given away the fact that it was terribly slippery and the last thing he wanted was to fall and hurt his already tender back again. Some more steps revealed that there was no way ahead; the glimmering light had been coming from an enormous, shining wall.

He had seen far too many dimonds since his childhood in his family vault at Gringotts to not recognise the luminescent brilliance of the wall in front of him.

"Of course," he muttered, "the last square on the board. What else would it be? Freedom, Hogwarts...perhaps my home. One confession away. Diamond. One of the most hardest substances ever known. Very thick. The way out. Bird."

The wall was not uniform; there was a quite large bend in the middle as if someone had tried to break it. There was no tool lying around to help him and the creature was coming up from behind. Draco raised his hand and punched the wall. Hard. Sharp pain shooted from his knuckles and spread through his arm. He cried out in agony but did not give up, not yet. He punched the wall again. And again. And again. And again, until he slumped upon the slippery floor and lied against the wall. He saw the creature coming for him, scarily slow like always.

He closed his eyes to find the familiar warmth of the Potions Classroom around him.

 _As usual, she was standing with her back facing him._

 _"That's when I remember! Always then!" He banged his fist on one of the desks. "Always… then. Because the only way to undo a memory charm is torture... and clearly I have been tortured enough! It was exactly there! I can't keep doing this, Granger. I can't! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else's turn?"_

 _She pointed to Question 3._

 _How are you going to **WIN**?_

 _"Can't I just lose? Just this once? Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell her everything. What I feel about you. Just a little, honest confession. Fuck the curse...I...I can't keep doing this!" He paused before continuing again. "I can't keep doing this. I can't, I can't always do this. It's not fair! Granger, it's just not fair! Why can't I just lose!"_

 _'NO', she wrote on the board._

 _"But I can remember, Gran— Hermione. You don't understand. I can remember it all. Every time. And you'll still be gone. Whatever I do, you still won't be there."_

 _He sat on a bench and laid his head on the desk. He cupped his eyes, and heaved violently, willing the tears to not fall down. Suddenly a soft hand crept around his right cheek and held it lightly. Draco looked up to see Hermione Granger looking at him with a tenderness that he had not known that she possessed._

 _"Draco, you are not the only person who ever lost someone. It's the story of everybody. Get over it. Beat it. Break free. Draco, it's time. Get up off your arse, and win."_

He opened his eyes to face his destiny.

"Hello again. No more confessions, sorry." he yelled. "But I will tell you the truth. I know I feel something for Hermione Granger. I always have— hate, anger, passion, penitence— they all have been directed by me towards her. What I feel now, is a secret. And it needs to be kept!"

He punched the wall.

"So I'll tell you nothing. Nothing at all. Instead, I'm going to do something far worse. I'm going to get out of here. Break this curse and find that wretched witch who put me in here in the first place. And whatever she is trying to do, I'm going to stop it, Granger."

He punched the wall again, not stopping to look that the creature was now just behind him.

"It might take a little while but in the mean time, since you want me to tell you a story, I'll tell you one. The Brothers Grimm, lovely muggle storytellers. According to them, there's this emperor, and he asks the shepherd boy, 'How many seconds in eternity?'"

Draco could not complete his story, for the creature had now closed its devilish claws right over his face. He cried an agonising scream as he burned. He felt as if he was being thrown straight into the fires of hell. From the corner of his eye, he saw movement beside him and as the dusty, evil creature disappeared in a final shower of milky white light, he was greeted with the sight of Meridia Moon.

"Do you want my mercy?" she asked him sharply.

Draco gave her one long, hard stare from his vulnerable, lying position on floor. The silence between them was pregnant with tension.

"I want you gone!" he spat finally.

"Are you sure, Malfoy? It's been _some_ time since I trapped you in here."

"I just want you _bloody_ gone!"

"Your wish is my command," she told him in a mocking tone as she bowed lowly.

Draco began crawling away, away from this filthy woman. He did not notice that someone else was standing behind her, trying to break away from the restraints that were holding her. How could he have? She was invisible and her voice had been muted. How could have seen her? How could he have heard? How could he have known that she wanted to rush to him to comfort him and hold him in her arms?

"Look how he suffers, girly... just because he doesn't want to admit what he feels for you," the witch whispered to Hermione as they saw the boy crawling away with blood dripping from his burnt body. The girl glared at her, wanting to shout, 'You're a liar, you sadistic freak! He just wants to break the curse!'

"Ah... I see, you don't want to admit either that you understand that he doesn't want to admit his feelings for you? Well, anyway, come on, let's leave him to his own devices. By the way, don't call me a 'sadistic freak' because I am not one and do you know, you are this little voice in his head, telling him and guiding him at every turn."

Hermione's eyes widened on their own accord.

"I see, you don't. Of course, how could you have? Let's go back now, anyway. You've seen too much."

Once again the metallic band was fastened around her wrist and Hermione was gone.

.. ... .

Draco went back to from where he had come: the teleporter room. He had to do this. He had to do this. He had to. Blood was dripping freely from his body as he remembered what all he had done earlier. He thought a lot about Hermione and that cozy classroom in the dungeons. While Draco was trying to make his way to the room, his mind was in the classroom.

 _"People always get it wrong with ill and injured wizards." he told her. "We take forever to die. Even if we're too injured to heal back, every cell in our bodies keeps trying. Dying properly can take days. It's why we like to die among our own kind. They know not to bury us early. Perhaps, that is why Death Eaters preferred the Killing Curse. I think, in my current condition, it will take me about a day and a half to reach the top of the tower and find the teleporter. I think, if I'm lucky, I have a day and a half. I have to do this, Granger. It's the only way. I have to be strong. I should have known from the very beginning. Of course. The portrait of you, the creature from my own nightmares. This place is my own bespoke torture chamber. Intended for me only. And all those skulls in the water? How could there be other prisoners in my hell? The answer of course is there were never any other prisoners. And the stars, they weren't in the wrong place. And I haven't time travelled... I've just been here a very, very long time." He fell on the floor of the classroom._

In reality, Draco had somehow climbed the stairs and his destination was now just a few metres away. He crawled on.

 _"Every room resets. Remember I told you that? Every room reverts to its original condition. Logically, the teleporter should do the same. Teleporter. Fancy word. Just like the Floo, really. Except it breaks down living matter and information and transmits it without magic. All you have to do is add energy. The room has reset. Returned to its original condition when I arrived. That means there's a copy of me still in that machine. Me, exactly as I was when I first got here...seven thousand years ago. All I have to find is some energy. And all you need for energy is something to burn."_

He found the electrodes— the same electrodes that had been attached to the skull he had found. Draco attached them just above his ears and checked the machine. "Wish me goodluck, Granger," he murmured and hit the button. As soon as he did so, he received a large, electrical shock to his already weakened body which took the brunt of it as it burned further. Had he screamed? He could not tell; his senses were lost and his skin was tingling with pain. His legs were utterly worn out and they gave way as he lost his balance. In his last moments he lied on the sand present on the floor of the teleporter room and said, "How long can I keep on doing this, Granger? Burning the old me to make a new one?" before hastily scribbling the word, 'BIRD' in the sand before him with his fingers.

Soon after his death, the blood stains he had left behind vanished into puffs of smoke and so did his body— well most of it, except the skull. And as the old Draco Malfoy completed a cycle, a new Draco Malfoy appeared in the teleporter, utterly unaware of what had just happened. This Draco did not know a single thing, like the one before him, and all those six thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Draco Malfoys before that one, all those years ago.

He said the same words in the same places over and again, only the numbers changed. He died in the same manner and a new one appeared, through exactly the same process as before. Thus every time Draco looked upon the stars from his position by one of the parapets on the roof, they seemed to have changed their positons. One time he thought he was twelve thousand years into the future. One time he thought he was sixty thousand years into the future. Some other time he thought he was a million years into the future.

Like a phoenix, Draco Malfoy burned himself and rised from his ashes year after year. His captor visited him every thousand years and every thousand years, he refused to either confess or bow down before her. And just like that, Draco Malfoy jumped from a window well over a billion times, dug a grave well over a billion times, got tricked well over a billion times and in general, learnt the same thing over and again well over a billion times. By each cycle, he learnt that the diamond wall was hopelessly thick. In each cycle he thought that it was all hopeless. In each cycle, there was this little voice belonging to Hermione Granger in his head, telling him to stop moping, get up off his arse and win somehow. In each cycle, everything was almost the same, except the story he told the creature, which lengthened each time. During the fourth million time, it had went like this:

"The shepherd's boy says, 'There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years, a little bird—'"

(He had been burnt yet again.)

It was after 4.5 billion times that Draco Malfoy was able to carve out a way for himself. These 4.5 billion years equalled a single, but nonetheless long day in the time-locked world and all of these years were nothing but an endlessly long wait for Hermione Granger, who was mocked well over a million times for ignoring the boy who had just wanted her to forgive him, a boy who would rather die than admit his love for her because she loved another, a boy who was so guilty about what he did that he was willing to sacrifice everything.

It was at the end of these 4.5 billion years that Draco was able to say aloud the whole story as he gave the diamond wall one last punch.

He said, "The shepherd boy says, 'There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years, a little bird comes. It sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.' You must think that's a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that's a hell of a—"

The wall broke with a shatter and he stepped out, the creature on his heels.

"Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird." he finished finally and watched the most dreaded nightmare from his dreams disintegrate into a harmless, dirty white cloth, some wheels and gears and small cudgels of wood. It seemed he had stepped out of some sort of a tear in space. The tear disappeared within moments of him seeing it and miraculously condensed into the golden confession dial. He bent down and clutched it in his hands. When he had picked it up, he turned around to find a most astonishing sight.

There, right on the floor, sitting just where he had supposedly seen her dying, was Hermione Granger. Alive.

"You are alive?" he whispered as he rushed towards her.

She could only shake her head as she still had not been given her voice back.

"Uh-huh, not so soon, Malfoy." the witch spoke as she appeared between them.

"You!" he seethed, "If you as much as touched her, then you will repent, Moon. Once I die, then see how much of a slice of heaven I will give you! We'll see how your peace will be lost to hollowness in the same way you took it away from my ancestors and me—"

"Calm down, boy! The curse has been broken, hasn't it? I will leave you alone, forever. Now stop speaking."

She snapped her fingers to release Hermione from her binds. It happened so suddenly that Hermione, who had been leaning to her right, fell sideward. Reflexively, Draco caught her and straightened her posture. Her eyes caught his for a moment as he helped her stand up, she blinked, breaking the connection. He pulled back.

Meridia Moon looked at them with knowing eyes but did not choose to comment. Instead, she said something else.

"Good. Now that everyone is free, let's get you home," In a miniscule second, she was standing between, with each one of her hands on either's shoulder. "Advantages of being a ghost," she said to no one in particular. "One, two, three!" she added in a singsong voice. "Back you go!"

.. ... .

Hermione opened her eyes to find herself in The Room of Requirement— the real one from her own universe. Beside her, Draco was lying on the floor, still unconscious. She looked at his face which seemed to have worn out with tiredness. Her gaze then went to his knuckles which were bloodied and bruised tremendously. She stroked them softly but he did not wake up. As she did so, she realised one thing: Draco Malfoy was not an evil person. Sure, a git but not evil— never evil and at his core he knew how to be good.

And anyway, Ron and she had simultaneously chosen not to be together in a futile relationship just for the sake of it.

She searched for some spare parchment and a self-inking quill in her robe pockets. After finding the said materials, she hastily scribbled something onto the parchment, folded it and left it beside the sleeping boy.

Soon after that, she exited after finding her wand on a small table by the door with a rare flourish in her steps and a little smile dancing on her lips.

.. ... .

Draco woke up foggy-eyed and yawned rather loudly. Soon after that he noticed the piece of folded parchment beside him. He opened it to find the large, curly handwriting that could only have been Granger's.

 _If you want to, then meet me in the library tomorrow at four. We can talk, you know, of random things and I think, give it a shot._

 _Expecting you tomorrow,_

 _H.G._

Draco's eyes widened with a mixture of joy and shock upon reading what she had written but he soon controlled the grin that was spiling from the edges of his mouth. He reread the note to make himself believe that it was all real. That it had all been real.

Soon after that, he exited after finding his wand on a small table by the door with a little dance in his steps and a rare smile flourishing on his lips.

-end-

.. ... .

.. ... .

Okay, for now this is the end. I might write an epilogue in the recent future or continue their story in a sequel. We'll see. Anyway, please review (I actually live for the reviews) thanks!


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